Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

I almost feel sorry for discredited professor Mark Regnerus. Almost but not quite

Regnerus

To say that things don't look good for discredited University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus would be an understatement. Apparently the paradox of your own university denouncing your work while at the same time you are testifying in a trial as an "expert witness" seems to be an angle which has the media humming.

That's all folks have been talking about and no doubt attorneys for the state of Michigan - who called Regnerus to testify in defense of the state ban on marriage equality and second parent adoption - cannot be pleased.

The press coverage has been more ugly than those pictures of celebrities without their make up. And naturally because I don't like the machinations of anti-gay groups or their supporters, allow me to feature snippets from two of the most brutal articles.

Academics have been running from Regnerus since 2012, when he
reported that a broad-based population survey he had conducted at the
behest of the conservative Witherspoon Institute supported the
institute’s contention that children are more successful when they grow
up “with their married mother and father.”

Opponents of same-sex
marriage immediately began citing Regnerus’ study as scientific proof
that laws banning such unions were justified by concern for the welfare
of children raised in same-sex households.

But fellow academics
have taken issue with everything from the origins of Regnerus’ study
(two conservative groups that oppose gay marriage paid the associate
professor $785,000 to commission it) to his population sample (which was
limited to children born long before same-sex marriages became legal
anywhere in the U.S.).

The most damning criticism centers on
Regnerus’ admission that he deliberately structured his study to compare
children whose parents had a same-sex relationship with those who grew
up in opposite-sex households undisturbed by separation or divorce.

Regnerus’ research made waves for another reason. It had the massive weight of a religious conservative money and marketing machine
behind it, and it quickly became clear that the study was only
incidentally an academic product. After concerns mounted that the
peer-review process might have been rushed, both the publishing journal
and independent parties launched investigations. Two hundred social scientists signed a letter
citing “serious concerns about the scholarly merit of this paper.” The
journal that published the paper commissioned an audit assessing
problems with the peer-review process. The audit found
“serious flaws and distortions that were not simply ignored, but
lauded” in the review process. It found blatant conflicts of interest in
that “all three of the respondents to these papers have ties to the
Witherspoon Institute,” the conservative religious organization that
funded the study with roughly $700,000. Referring to the Regnerus study
and a companion piece, the audit concluded that “neither paper should have been published.” In a separate interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Darren E. Sherkat, the designated reviewer, dismissed the entire study as “bullshit.”

Scholarship has to be funded by someone. But disclosures and
transparency are supposed to let readers know this. Instead, Regnerus
was caught lying
about the role of conservative funding in his work. In the study,
Regnerus writes that “the funding sources played no role at all in the
design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the
data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.” Yet in emails
obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, Regnerus flatly
contradicts this claim, showing Witherspoon was intimately involved with
shaping the study. Regnerus wrote that he would like “more feedback”
from Witherspoon’s president about the study’s “boundaries,” “optimal
timelines,” and “hopes for what emerges from this project,” and he
refers to a meeting hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation, in which key supporters of Regnerus’ study discussed the need to generate research to help oppose gay marriage. According to live blog reports of today’s testimony, one of Regnerus’ emails asked what the study’s supporters “expect” from his research.

I almost feel sorry for Regnerus, but then I think about all of the innocent families that his flawed research could potentially harm.

4 comments:

The truth of the matter is that Regnerus fraudulent report has ALREADY caused harm, including death, to the victims of those using this instrument. Both Uganda and Russia explicitly turned to this document in their pogroms of LGBT genocide.

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.